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Hark! The Whispering Dead of the Burial Lake

by Fen Walker

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Jay Jordan
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Jay Jordan Fen Walker is alway such a fantastic listen. The soundscapes are immersive and the production is immaculate. Favorite track: Lost in the Pines I. The Nocturne II. The Jortuuk III. The Tunnel in the Trees (Feat. Evergreen Rupe).
A Cat Wizard
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A Cat Wizard An incredible audio journey, resplendent with a multitude of extra goodies. A fun, well-written story attending evocative ambiance, complete with the smell of the grave. An experience worth having in full. Favorite track: Through Twilit Marsh They Sing Their Mother's Song.
mrscott2
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mrscott2 Rich, dramatic instrumental rhythm and harmony. Favorite track: The Sisters of the Spear.
Destructa
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Destructa Fen Walker just goes from strength to strength, and the artwork is always badass. Favorite track: The Mist Wreathed Shores of Ur Rising.
Jason Shook
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Jason Shook This album just radiates pure immersive fantasy! Bringing us into the 2nd Saga of the Fen Walker story. It not only expands greatly on the lore involved, but in dimension of sound as well. Retaining his signature style of composition with a tip of the hat to some classic RPG OST influence. The Wayfarer continues to brave into new territory and leaves us grasping for more! Favorite track: The Sisters of the Spear.
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  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 6 Fen Walker releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Behold! Visions From the Scrying Pool!, Fare Thee Well Battle Winds, Hark! The Whispering Dead of the Burial Lake, Sojourns in the Realm of the Undermoon, The Totem Wilds Call Thy Name, and Hail! O' Barrow Lands!. , and , .

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  • Special Limited Edition Cassette
    Cassette + Digital Album

    Experience Fen Walker's masterpiece and immerse yourself in the land of Ur! This complete package includes Hark! The Whispering Dead Of The Burial Lake on transparent purple Super Ferro cassette encased in the beautiful art work from Brendan Elliot. A full 11x17 poster of the album art and a Fen Walker pro-sticker. A hand made 4 oz. "Barrow Musk" candle to burn as you set out on your journey. Plus a hand bound booklet with the whole story, including artwork and a map with the characters paths lined out for you to follow while you listen!

    Includes unlimited streaming of Hark! The Whispering Dead of the Burial Lake via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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  • Hark! The Whispering Dead of the Burial Lake Cassette Bundle
    Cassette + Digital Album

    These are artist copies of the Lamp and Dagger release of Hark! The Whisper Dead of the Burial Lake. This bundle includes a pro-dubbed cassette with O-card, a hand-crafted candle, a poster, a story booklet, and a die-cut sticker.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Hark! The Whispering Dead of the Burial Lake via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.
Even an afternoon’s exertion did not bring any rose to her corpse-white cheeks. Blood streamed from her forehead and chin, wounds bestowed upon her by the reaching brambles of the forest. Again, she heard the cough of her sister’s infernal weapon, and her howl of frustration. She doubled her already precarious pace, knowing it would take her twin precious seconds to load the weapon again. The forest’s undergrowth sped past; she leapt over root and stone. A branch spread the flesh of her cheek; she cried out but continued her sprint. In the distance, between the trees she saw her twin, rifle raised. The strange pale girl urged her legs to a final burst of speed, knowing that at any moment she would hear the sound of that accursed black dust jettison is deadly bite. She saw it then, a mass of fur and scale. There was no time for further considerations. She hurled her mother’s spear. There was the howl of an enraged beast, then a second roar, of black dust igniting, and a third, low bellow from the Wortuuk as it gave up its spirit. Woja’s legs gave way at the beast’s side and she collapsed. Soja’s shadow fell over her. “I believe this kill is mine,” she said, pulling a serrated dagger from her sash and grabbing the beast’s great horn. “I am afraid not sister, our mother's spear is buried in it's heart, I struck first,” Woja replied, grabbing great handfuls of the Wortuuk’s fur to help her to her feet. “And my shot is buried in its brain, I killed it!” “It was already dying!” “Silence,” a large man in hunting leathers stepped from the underbrush. “It seems once again you are equally matched, neither of you shall collect the horn of the Wortuuk today," Soja's guardian Kyllar said. Soja growled and stabbed her dagger into the beast’s wooly neck. Woja shrugged and pulled her dagger from her own sash and went about skinning beast. She had not wanted the horn anyway.
2.
God’s it was cold! Soja sat in the bow of the boat, Woja’s stinking animal fur about her shoulders. Reeking, lecherous sailors milling about. She cleaned her rifle to keep her mind busy, lest rage should over take her. Yet, despite the repetitive comfort of her task, her mother’s words, uttered a season ago in the great keep remained hungry, and continued to gnaw. She had been spying on her mother and sister. Why should Woja be summoned to a secret council and not her? From behind a wall length curtain, she had heard the conversation in hushed tones. Their mother was dying. This Soja had suspected. She had felt deep sorrow then, not for her mother's imminent passing, but for lack of grief. She had loved her mother, but Woja had been her mother's star, not her. Much of the remaining conversation was so hushed she was unable to hear it. She heard enough to understand their plan: “take me home” and “barrow.” The crazy woman, she meant for Woja to take her back to Ur, if it were a real place at all, to be buried. Then, her mother’s final words, clear as the midday bell, struck her like iron shot: “Do not tell you sister, she is not strong enough.” It was a summer’s eve that Woja and her mother escaped the City of the Great Seat undetected by all but Soja. She had followed them into the woods at a distance. Her mother detected her, the confrontation with Woja had been violent. Woja was to be Jarl, and it was her duty to remain and take the great seat when it was her time. Father would be furious, as would the guardians. Woja would have none of it. “It is my duty as the eldest to fulfill our mother’s final wishes,” she said. “Those are her ways, the old ways!” Soja hissed, wiping blood from her nose, a token of their brief battle. “ Look!” she said, jabbing a finger to the distant city, “progression, industry, the Scire!” Woja looked to home, her strange, scarred face impassive. The white towers and walls lit with the glow of coal fire were impressive, yet within the walls many suffered, while the few, she included, lived in luxury. She turned her back on the city, with its forward-looking yet backwards people and its cloud of coal smoke. “Come mother, we have a long way to go and your strength shall not last.” “What about father?” Soja said. “He’s not our father,” Woja replied, not looking back. Soja stood alone watching her family depart into the darkness of the woods. “Come along little one,” her mother called weakly from the trees. Soja had followed reluctantly, leaving small rune markings in the soil for Kyllar and Pjorlar, their guardians, to follow, "She's not strong enough," echoing in her head. “Mother! Mother!” Woja’s cries cleaved into Soja’s reveries. She leapt up and rushed to the stern. Her mother had gone as pale as Woja, her eyes unfocused and filled with tears. She lifted a shaking hand to point off into the sea. There on the horizon, land rose up from the waters, dressed in silks of morning mist. She spoke in the old language then. “Home” she uttered, and her spirit departed.
3.
This was truly a land for the dead. Why would their wards travel so far and risk so much to come to this burial ground? At every turn, there seemed to be a raised platform bearing a skeleton in moldering garments or a tree’s hollow bearing the same. Tangled in the roots of trees was the evidence of great battles: bones, rusted swords and standards. When they camped in a cave, it was amongst the deceased they slept. Kyllar and Pjorlar, would never admit it to each other, but they both felt unease slowly work its way through their mental battlements, a fearlessness built from the brick work of warfare and mortared with the horrors witnessed upon the killing fields. Each day they wandered an endless landscape of woods and marsh, over which hung an unbroken and preternatural quietude. Somewhere, their wards, Soja and Woja wandered these same untamed wilds where even a battle-hardened man had cause to look over his shoulder. They were charged to reclaim their responsibilities, the Jarl’s stepdaughters. Should they fail, it would be better that they remain and join the rest of these nameless dead in their secluded moldering. They came upon the barrows on the fourth day. Kyllar had never believed a word of The Woman’s tales, of which there were many. True, her adventures in The Underneath had been verified, and had brought trade between their two peoples. But her tales of a southern land across the ocean? A barbaric warlord beyond the powers of the great sleep, who raided this supposed realm? Mounds of dirt the height of a guildsman’s manor, housing generations of noble dead? Madness. Until now. “I always believed The Woman’s tales, I am happy they bear some credence.” Pjorlar said with a grin. Kyllar grunted, shouldered his pack and trudged across a seemingly endless plane, where only the mighty barrows, plundered of their treasure many years ago, broke the horizon.
4.
Woja was glad her sister had joined her on this venture. Though her grumbling was tiresome, the litter bearing their mother’s body was more that she could have managed by herself. In the few days they had been together, Woja had noticed changes in her sister, her ever flowing skepticism in her mother’s past had seemed to dry up. Their daylong journey across the Barrow Lands had brought her to tears. That had been the first great revelation. The second had been the procession of spirits they watched glide across the waters as they waded from the island to Ur’s mainland. The latter, the Scire could never explain. “I don’t understand,” Soja had said that evening, as the sister suns, the girls namesakes sank below the horizon, Woja, pale and strange, followed by Soja bright and fiery. “The explorers father sent before we were born never told of this land. They said they found nothing but endless ocean.” “Our step father kills those who fail him, and they failed. They were frightened, so they did not tell the truth of their defeat. Did mother ever tell you of the defilement of the barrows?” “No.” Woja began. She told of the airships and the men who ransacked their ancestor’s precious riches. Of their mother who snuck aboard and struck a fatal blow to the flag ship, of a sprit storm that tore the fleet apart. The two remaining ships returned home, the vessels consigned to scrap, the crews, terrified of reprisal from their Jarl, bound to an oath of secrecy. When she had finished, she watched Soja stare into the flames of their campfire. A procession of cold moons, like the sprits they had witnessed earlier that day, chased each other across the night sky. Woja stood and walked to where land ended. She looked across the waters to the Barrow Lands. On those distant shores a campfire burned. Pjorlar and Kyllar no doubt. She smiled, her sister had been less discreet with her markings than she thought. Kyllar was here no doubt to save his neck, and reclaim his wayward charge, Pjorlar to reclaim his love. Brave, stupid Pjorlar. He would make a good husband one day. He had always believed her mothers stories. She liked that about him. With sudden inspiration, she wadded out into the sea towards the distant shore of the Barrow Lands. Night was falling and the pines were growing thick. Kyllar swore as he hacked away at the reaching branches with a small hand axe. Pjorlar had been unusually grim all day and it was bothering him to no end. There had been none of his songs, or usual fooling. Something had happened last night after he had fallen asleep. Before, they had sung songs and danced about the fire, quite drunk. Perhaps a throbbing head ailed him. They camped in a clearing they found after tunneling with axe and sword through a particularly vicious patch of brambles, a guttering oil lamp their only source of light. It was a strange patch of ground, a near perfect circle with a wall of brambles all about. It reminded Kyllar of a pen, for some kind of animal. There was a hole in the ground at the center of the clearing, with a stream running into it. Neither of them liked the looks of it. It was deep, for the water made no sounds where it landed somewhere below. The two men were asleep when the Jortuuk crawled from the blackness of the pit. It was hungry, but not enough to eat the flesh of a man. It breathed deep of the air, there were mothers near. Not with child, but they would do. It turned from the slumbering figures and loped through the tunnel made in the brambles. They had freed him, and would awake to the dawn, never knowing what they had unleashed upon the lands of Ur. “Beware, my little stars” They both heard the voice born upon pine scented winds. “Mother,” Soja whispered then shook her head. No, she was dead, her body wrapped and motionless upon the litter. Woja set her end down quickly and rummaged through her satchel. Her hand returned clutching The Fang. With deft motion she twisted free The Tooth and attached the new, longer spear head to the shaft. Soja, also feeling the approach, set her side of the litter down, un-shouldered her rifle and loaded it. No sooner had she raised the weapon to her shoulder that it appeared between the trees. A kaleidoscope of forms comprised of vileness and malignancy, a thing of teeth, eyes and tongues, circling slowly from tree to tree, waiting for its moment. Soja’s finger twitched, the rifle’s hammer snapped forth sending the flint home. The shot bellowed from the barrel and sank into the soft bark of a tree a meter from The Jortuuk. It leapt. Woja slashed with her spear. It cut strange flesh. A resounding scream forced both girls to their knees with hands over ears. The Jortuuk chuckled. The part of it that had once been human urged the monstrous rest back into the woods, but that other, ravenous half refused to listen. It crawled, its twisted, fleshy mouth close to the earth, ready to taste flesh. Then it heard familiar words, words of horror and pain from long ago. Words that seemed to flutter as moths, and to which no amount of swiping or batting of mighty arms could repel. At the center of The Fang, a glow blossomed into a blinding flower of light. Woja stood, spear raised above her head, The Fang bright as a star. The Jortuuk cowered before the mighty, purifying refulgence. Woja struck. Soja had wondered how her sister knew the path to their destination. Their mother’s sprit was with them, aiding them on their journey. She had warded off that creature with runes of banishment, given power to The Fang. Even now Woja muttered quietly, but this conversation had another party, and it wasn't Soja. The trees about them were converging, weaving. Bark surrounded them. A rooted cathedral. At the end of this tunnel, the light of morning streamed.
5.
The dawn found them trudging through a vast marsh. Soja took up a song. Woja stopped for a moment, realizing it was something their mother had once sung to them, so long ago. “Surely you would rather sing one of fathers battle hymns,” She said. “You mean step father’s?” Soja answered, pushing her end of the litter forward, forcing Woja to continue their march toward the imminent mountain range towering before them, white and gold in the early morning light. Soja took up the song once again, and Woja joined in. Kyllar heard the singing from afar. Pjorlar would have taken it up too, had he not disappeared that night in the clearing. Kyllar doubled his pace, gods he was old.
6.
No matter the season, the crossing was a dangerous one. Pjorlar had killed a large beast at the timberline. It’s flesh, smoked over a fire, filled his pack and would sustain him, while it’s wooly hide would ward off the mountain’s cruel chill. Thoughts of Woja kept up his spirits, though guilt of leaving Kyllar gnawed as well. It had been many nights ago that she had appeared at the fireside of their camp on the Barrow Lands, her pale skin a-glow like an ember. Kyllar snored loudly on the other side of the fire, sleeping the sleep of the drunk. She had slipped under Pjorlar’s fur with him, her skin cold and shivering, her clothes wet with seawater. He held her and chided his love for running away, but soon understood the honor of Woja’s task. Her request of him however, was not so easy to accept. A parting kiss and a promise bound his heart to hers. He watched her wade off into the ocean. The Spine was a maze of ice and rock, a glacial labyrinth, a trap of cold stone and bottomless crevasses. Yet despite this, he never felt waylaid, it was as if the wind or something residing within guided his steps. One day, after following a down slope he found himself at the edge of a cliff. Far below stretched a land of golden trees and glittering streams. “Go to the golden land south of the great mountain where my aunt resides and rules. Await me there,” Woja had whispered that night so many days ago. Pjorlar adjusted his pack and rifle and made his way down, singing a song his love had taught him. “You old fool!” Soja barked at Kyllar as they sped through the woods. Woja led them at a break neck pace through the forest. Kyllar’s breath came in sharp, wheezing gasps. If he survived, he would put away his smoking pipe forever. Close behind them, The Lost followed. A throng of tumbling forms, crimson eyed and mouthed, urged forth by a lust for new flesh to inhabit. Kyllar was never a curious man, and it hadn’t been curiosity that had led him to enter the small stone building, but necessity. The rain had lashed him for days. Cold, wet, alone and with no end in sight, his sanity close to the breaking point, a nights rest in a dry place seemed an unfathomable luxury. He had been sitting there contentedly, with a small fire and a pipe when Woja appeared at the door. He stared at her with disbelief. The gall of the girl! To lead him along these long months, only to suddenly appear at her leisure! A look in his eye stopped him from speaking. There was terror there, and she was not looking at him, but behind him. He turned and looked into the darkness finding himself staring into a face. That face would haunt him for years to come. He had leapt and ran from the stone hut, charging past Woja, bellowing a guttural scream. He ran headlong into Soja who swore as they both tumbled to the ground. Forms began to pour from the door of the little building, more than the structure could have possibly held within. A firm hand grasped Kyllars arm and pulled him into the woods. They watched the figures spin and dance, a nightmare music issuing from unhallowed throats. Then the festivities were over and the hunt began.
7.
The Lost surrounded the lake, but could come no further. This was not a place for those between life and the great sleep. The lake was shallow and they walked the length of it, fog hovering over the surface and shrouding the glowing eyes, mouths, and twitching limbs at the lakeshore. A mighty and twisted tree appeared out of the mists. Woja knew their journey had ended, for this was the barrow of the all mothers. Kyllar stood at a distance saying nothing. He felt that to break the silence here would be to sin yet again against the law of this strange land. The twins set the litter down and placed their mother at the trees roots. “Goodbye mother,” Woja said, uncovering her mother's face and kissing the exposed forehead. Tears streamed freely down Soja’s cheeks but she said nothing. Woja took up a song her mother had been teaching her during their long trek. The spirits of all those who resided there took up the song, a chorus of whispers permeated from the mist. By the songs end, the body was gone. Dawn lifted the gloom of that place and scattered The Lost back to the shadows. “Goodbye my stars,” their mother said. Soja gasped. Their mother had appeared, as had an earthen portal between the great trees roots. Through this the specter stepped, looked back once at her daughters, then, as a candles flame is snuffed out, both woman and door vanished. "Mother," Soja finally managed, "am I strong?" The answer came as if from across a great distance, "you are the strongest." As did the fog that surrounded Kyllar, obscuring what had transpired. When its last wisps dispersed only Soja stood there, her face streaked with tears. “My sister is not coming home with us.”

about

After 20 years on foreign shores, The Wanderess has returned to her homeland, to be entombed. Her twin daughters, one a keeper of ancient traditions, the other, a disciple of strange and new wisdoms, are tasked with their mothers burial. Escaping the guardians of the Hegemonic capital, the sisters, always at odds, take their frail and dying mother south to her final resting place.

Can the sisters find the ancient and hidden barrow of the all mothers? Can they remain united through incredible odds? Will the Hegemonic guardians track down their charges or will the Jortuuk find and devour them all?

credits

released November 27, 2020

Wayfarer- Orchestration

Recorded, mixed and mastered at The Bookhouse by Wayfarer

Artwork by Brendan Elliott (www.instagram.com/brendanelliott.art/)

Throat singing on "Lost in the Pines" by Evergreen Rupe (thefogweaver.bandcamp.com)

Sample of "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," written and recited by Robert Frost

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Fen Walker Portland, Oregon

The music of the barbaric and sorcery scarred lands of Ur.

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